“I can’t believe you sent all those people back,” Juliet raised her eyebrow.

“We need them to build special fences for the boars! If they escape, I will personally have all of these people executed, I swear,” Jacob said with a dead-serious expression.

“I know. They also know since you repeated the same thing three times while shouting to their faces. I’ve never seen you this agitated for something so far,” Juliet mused.

“You don’t understand, woman!” Jacob was clawing his own face, “Demonic Boars are the most delicious thing you will ever eat! They can also get quite high in level once you feed them the right diet! It’s incredible how the right mix of Spiritual Herbs can also make their meat acquire a certain special spiciness. It’s almost magic, see they have this gland in their body that—”

“Woah, there, save me the lesson in how to raise pigs. Go keep your pig livestock thingy, and don’t bother me,” Juliet said. She wasn’t the biggest fan of meat. She ate it, but she preferred vegetables and dairy products. Meat always seemed somewhat gross to her, even though her mother made her eat it to stay strong.

Jacob shook his head and started fantasizing about all the dishes they would now be able to cook. Then, he would breed the Demonic Boars until he became the King of Pork. That was going to be his profession once they had killed the majority of Demonic Beasts roaming Earth.

He would open his own BBQ restaurant with homemade pork meat.

“Anyway, my group is now down to fourteen people. The nine I sent back were mostly idiots who almost got themselves killed against two Hellspawn Chameleons,” Juliet said.

“Those bastards still roam the forest?” Jacob was surprised. Their scouts had killed two nests of the damned things thanks to Geneva.

“Maybe there are more out there?” Juliet volunteered.

“We will curb their numbers. The Hellspawn Chameleons are dangerous to civilians; they cross walls without sentinels noticing. I’ll need to add more Formations to the walls in St. Peter,” Jacob noted.

“Sounds like an awful amount of work for someone who is going to pull a King Arthur for more than a month straight.”

“I know, I know. Unfortunately, there are too many things that require my direct supervision, but we need first to get people to St. Peter,” Jacob sighed.

“I still don’t understand why they can’t stay in the little towns of their own,” Juliet said.

“They do not have any means to grow stronger. And we cannot really give them much more without risking creating some problem. Blacksoil has a very high crime rate, sadly. Once a powerful Martial Technique or a good Spell ends up in the wrong hands, it can doom an entire town. And the more we go forward, the more they will need stronger Martial Techniques and Spells; that’s why the Contribution System is the most important step we have taken so far, second only to eliminating the Charybdes.”

“You meant, second only to slaughtering pigs to make bacon,” Juliet looked queasy at the idea.

“Right, third most important then,” Jacob laughed.

“What’s the average level in Blacksoil?”

Juliet remembered reading and discussing a report on the topic with Jacob, but she wasn’t sure about the figures anymore.

“There should be five people at the Mantis realm. They had to fight more than a couple of Demonic Beasts, and that helped them level up. Then, when we gave them the weak Cultivation Techniques, they started rising in levels like crazy. It seems like more than one person in Blacksoil has a good talent.”

“It’s incredibly they reached the Mantis realm when very few people did in St. Peter. We gave better Cultivation Techniques to our people, right?”

“Right. But you are ignoring a very important fact. When Joseph fought against the brutes in the temple where Geneva got her halberd, and I got my sword, he downed one-third of them alone. That was because he had a Martial Style. Our people have earned Martial Styles through the Contribution System; and not just that, they have Martial Techniques and Spells too.”

“The people in Blacksoil,” Jacob said calmly, “only have Cultivation Techniques. At most, they can use a few natural spells, like Francis’s mother did with those miniaturized thunderbolts. But, when compared to real Spells, they are nothing but a child’s trick. You could raze the entire Blacksoil to the ground unopposed if you wanted to.”

“Murdering hundreds of people is not high on my list of priorities,” Juliet answered.

“And what is, pray tell?”

Juliet approached slowly toward Jacob, crossing the small distance between them.

He felt a distinct intention from the Ancestral Bond and immediately jumped back. Ready to run for dear life. Juliet’s grin looked like a lion’s maw.

“We need to talk about it, Jacob. Whether you like it or not,” Juliet stated.

“Well, that’s what you think!” Jacob turned his back toward her and immediately started sprinting toward the general direction of the Alchemical Garden’s hideout.

He felt a ripple go through the air, and the atmosphere all around got suddenly hotter.

“Oh f*ck,” Jacob said while Juliet landed in front of him, with a pair of beautiful Phoenix’s Fire Wings on her back.

“That’s cheating, kid,” Jacob resigned himself.

“You know we have to clear the air, Jake,” she smiled sympathetically.

“Sure, let me discuss the inappropriate things that I have been feeling about a 15-year-old. Why not? What’s next, Juliet? We already share an Ancestral Bond. I do not want to influence your emotions. You saw how Helena reacted, and I barely even looked at her.”

Jacob saw Juliet turn toward a tree three times as thick as her own and punch it so strongly the trunk exploded in a shower of splinters and fragments on the other side, while the rest started falling in her direction.

Juliet sidestepped the tree and commented: “This is what I would do to that wh*re’s head if she wasn’t so important to you or St. Peter, Jacob. Whatever we say here not only stays between you and me, but I will keep respecting you and your feelings nonetheless. But ignoring it is something that we can’t afford while sharing this bond.”

I hate when kids are more mature than me, Jacob sighed.

“Ok, let’s be inappropriate, then,” he decided to talk.